A Lament For Two Vessels Lost at Sea

and the cloudiness of our perspectives

As I type this (5:32pm ET on Wednesday June 21), the front page of CNN has half of the opening screen devoted to stories about the sub that was lost trying to see the Titanic and the five crew members aboard.  MSNBC has nothing about it (instead all stuff about Washington and Hollywood) and Foxnews.com has their page split between that and a story about Adam Schiff.  AP News, NYT, Yahoo News, all pretty much the same.

The articles have shared the stories of each of the passengers on the sub and many messages are being posted about praying for their safe rescue.  There have also been plenty of comments posted that give a sense of schadenfreude about people who had a spare $250,000 to use on something like this.

In the midst, there are few if any stories that are easily accessible on these news sites focusing on another search and rescue effort taking place to  save the lives of possibly hundreds of people who have never seen $250,000 in their lives and whose names and stories most of us will likely never know.  A week ago, a ship carrying hundreds of people in the Mediterranean Sea sank off the coast of Greece.  Over 80 people are confirmed dead and 100+ have been rescued, but there are reports that there were well over 500 people on board.  Each of these people likely gave up most of their financial resources in a Libyan port to be packed onto this vessel in the slim and desperate hope of finding welcome on the other side of the sea.  Unlike those on the sub in the North Atlantic, we will likely never know their stories, their faces, or even their names.  They will join the over 20,000 people who have died trying to cross the Mediterranean in the last decade.

I understand the reality of the news cycle that the media follows - what brings clicks, shares, and advertising dollars is what drives what shows up on the front page.  And I also understand the reality of compassion fatigue around the slow motion tragedy of what has taken place in the Middle East and the Mediterranean during the last decade.  It is hard.

But this image today really spoke to me about all of this.  Our hearts are clouded when we miss the ongoing tragedy happening with people crossing the Mediterranean.  Our hearts are clouded when we have some measure of “they got what they deserved” when thinking about those five people whose time is running out in the North Atlantic.  Our hearts are clouded when the story of those five is shared simply because it draws clicks.  Our hearts are clouded when our hearts don’t break for the desperate situation of people who took the chance to cross the Mediterranean.

This is a lament.  The lament of the situations that so many find themselves in.  A lament of how money drives so much of the narrative of our lives.  A lament about the brutally stark divisions between the rich and the poor today which we see in these two sunken vessels.   A lament about the pain of this world.  How long, O Lord, how long?